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United voices can bring Channel 4 to Glasgow

Kevin Pringle

Can Scotland come together any more to advance the common good? When has it ever been able to?

Back in the 1990s, people who worked in the European parliament would talk in amazed tones about how MEPs representing Troubles-torn Northern Ireland — big figures like John Hume and Ian Paisley, from polar opposite traditions — would work as one in Europe to benefit their area. By contrast, the Scottish members would take Scotland’s partisan politics in their baggage to Brussels and Strasbourg. And that was long before the binary referendums on independence and Brexit.

Nowadays, everything in Scotland is politicised, whether it’s the new bridge over the Forth or boxes for babies.